Ms. Murray and Mr. Hensarling, co-chairs of the Congressional “super committee”, met with reporters today on the steps of the Capitol building .

“The message was sent,” said Senator Murray, “in order to emphasize that the committee is finding it difficult to come up with the $1.2 trillion in cost reductions mandated by the president‘s deficit reduction program. In mid-September, the president raised the target to $3 trillion. Now he has asked us to come up with another $447 billion to pay for the American Jobs Act. This is like asking Governor Christie one more time if he wants to run for president. At some point, you’ve just got to back off, you know?”

“The president said in his joint speech to Congress,” added Congressman Hensarling, “and I am quoting here, ‘this bill is paid for’. Then, he turns around, hands it to us, and says, ‘here, you guys figure out how to pay for it’. That’s not exactly fair. Our plate’s already pretty full. I mean, come on, $1.2 trillion is not exactly chump change. ”

The “super committee” is reeling, shell-shocked from the recent rounds of increased demands coming from the White House for more and more spending cuts.

“We’re feeling a bit dumped on,” said Senator Murray. “It just seems as if every day, we get a new demand for more cuts. I’m not really sure what our objective is now. But, I do know that, whatever it is, we need to get it done by Nov. 23rd and the clock is ticking. I wake up with panic attacks, hyperventilating in the middle of the night. A trillion dollars is hard for me to relate to. This is a whole lot of money. Seriously.”

“If we can just get a break in these ever-increasing demands, we might be able to actually get something accomplished,” said Congressman Hensarling. “I keep waiting for somebody to make a wish for a ‘gazillion dollars’. It’s getting kind of ridiculous.”

The “super committee” will provide recommendations to Congress for, well, let’s just say for a boatload of spending cuts by November 23.

The proposed legislation which, according to Mr. Reid, has the enthusiastic support of President Obama, provides for a bank of “Perma-Stop” funds between $300B and $500B that would automatically be available to Congress for funding the operation of the government in order to avert a shut down.

“This initiative will provide Congress with readily accessible funds that will allow the government to continue to operate in times of crisis,” said Mr. Reid. “As we have seen in recent months, our Republican colleagues have demonstrated a willingness, or perhaps we should even say a desire, to delay budgetary approval and thereby allow the government to shut down.”

The Reid / Pelosi proposal would set up a Perma-Stop Bank which would be directly funded by the Federal Reserve Board. These funds would be available for release based upon the approval of the Senate Majority Leader whenever the government requires so-called “stop-gap” funding. The bank would be operated on a “min / max” system by the Federal Reseve: whenever funds reached the minimum $300B level, an additional $200B would be injected to return the fund to the maximum level of $500B.

“We see this,” continued Leader Reid, “as an eminently reasonable approach to the constant start / stop dance we have played in the past few months with our Republican colleagues. They seem to feel they can shut down the government whenever the mood strikes them. I would remind our colleagues that those decisions can delay the issuance of Social Security checks which millions of American seniors depend upon for their very existence.”

Minority Leader Pelosi told reporters, “We see this legislation as key to the elimination of the incessant brinksmanship of threatening a government shut-down. We think that Americans are tired of the constant bickering and threats that do nothing but add tension and rancor to the process of conducting the people’s business. We believe our proposal will entirely eliminate this particularly nasty tactic that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have shown to be all-to-willing to use. We think Americans will embrace our proposal to put an end to this nonsense.”

In conclusion, Mr. Reid added, “We think this legislation offers a simple and elegant solution to the persistent and unnecessary ploys and tactics that panic-inducing Republicans use to scare seniors. It’s time to stop this ‘fire drill’ mentality and get on with governing our nation.”

Dreadmonger will provide updates to the story as they become available.

Congress is away on vacation, the Republican party is off campaigning in Iowa, and President Obama will soon head out to Martha’s Vineyard for his summer break. Washington looks a lot like a ghost town these days.

So, the Capitol pages have a great idea: “Let’s party!”

It has been over 175 years since these young Americans first donned their signature blue blazers and entered into service to their country as Capitol messengers. A job as a Congressional page has been a badge of pride and honor and has often led its members on to successful careers in the world of politics.

But soon the young pages will vanish from the US House of Representatives. The two culprits: budget cuts and improvements in technology.

“They waited until they were all out of Washington to tell us,” a spokesman for the pages told Dreadmonger. “Some junior level guy from the Congressional Office of Management and Budget gave us our pink slips. We’ve been outsourced to a Blackberry. Unbelievable!”

The letters sent to the pages were actually jointly signed by Speaker John Boehner and House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. Concerns about the program’s costs and effectiveness in an age of instant communication via smartphone led the House leadership to their decision to eliminate the pages. It is likely that the controversy and scandal that has rocked the page program hasn’t helped much. Several Congressional members have been accused of being a little too close to their blue-coated assistants in recent years.

In an exclusive interview with Dreadmonger, Perry X, anonymous leader of the House pages, said, “So, this week-end, we are having the monster party of all time on the floor of the House. Mom and Dad are out-of-town so, the pages will rock!”

“There’s a wicked bar in the back room at the House. You can’t imagine how well-stocked this dog is. We’ll start hitting that baby hard some time Friday afternoon. And they have this great smoking room with a walk-in humidor stocked with real Cuban cigars. It will be epic.”

When reporters from Dreadmonger inquired as to how the pages planned to gain access to one of the nation’s most highly secured locations for a party, Perry just smiled.

“You know, with this ‘PS’ rumor floating around, we have found our ex-bosses to be… most accommodating.”

The “PS” Perry refers to is the legendary “Page Scrapbook”. The scrapbook is shrouded in Congressional myth and mystery and its existence has never been independently confirmed. According to legend, it is purported to contain a 175-year old collection of documents, photos, and in more recent years, videos cataloguing the day-to-day interface between pages and their Congressional counterparts. Perry refused Dreadmonger’s repeated requests to confirm the existence of the ‘PS’.

“Look, it’s all Washington urban myth,” Perry went on to say. “Nothing but political fantasy. Especially this latest fairy tale going around that there are certain articles of clothing that have made their way into the ‘PS’. Seriously, there is nothing to it at all.”

Once again today on the floor of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi made crazy eyes at the Representatives who held up their cell phone cameras. Dreadmonger has been closely following the story on Minority Leader Pelosi which has largely been ignored by major media outlets.

This afternoon, Leader Pelosi gave an address to Congress in response to remarks received from her colleagues about her recent comments about “life on planet earth”. She repeatedly paused throughout the speech to give her now-familiar “crazy eyes” stare to members of Congress who raised their cell phone cameras.

Members of the House were literally rolling in the aisles with laughter by the end of Ms. Pelosi’s address. Several members have speculated that Ms. Pelosi is developing a stand up comedy act that she will launch later this year. Pelosi has reportedly been evaluating her options since losing the Speakership of the House as a result of the defeat of the Democrat-controlled House last November. Many members have encouraged Pelosi to pursue comedy full-time. One Congressman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said today that, “Nancy is a riot. She keeps the House in stitches – she is a natural comedienne. A lot of people don’t get her stuff, it’s too oblique. She is like the Andy Kaufman of the House. Seriously, she should be on SNL or something.”

Additional rumors within the beltway have Ms. Pelosi working on a book project. A compilation of Pelosi Tweets called “Tweets from Crazy Eyes’ Suite” is said to be in pre-production talks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Our anonymous Congressman was quoted as saying, “Nancy’s Tweets are off the hook. I have to be careful where I read them. She’s seriously wack.”

Ms. Pelosi would not respond to repeated requests for comment. Dreadmonger will continue to provide updates to this story.

President Obama opened the Twitter floodgates today in an effort to rally support for his bid to pressure Congress to get it together and solve the debt ceiling crisis adventure. The President’s staff tweeted out the Twitter names of all US Republican Congressional representatives – all of them – one by one – to everyone who follows the President. This regardless of the Representative‘s state of residence. So, the lucky recipients got LOTS of addresses that had no relationship whatsoever to their state’s representative. Cool!

Tech savvy Americans responded heartily to the President’s reach-out by bailing on him. 37,000 so far (still counting…) have pulled the plug on the President’s Twitter account.

Meanwhile, back in the House, Nancy Pelosi quoted Dreadmonger’s post from this past Friday, July 22. 2011, declaring an “end to life as we know it on Planet earth.” She once again made crazy eyes to all the cell phone cameras in the House chamber as an added treat for her Congressional colleagues.